Free Internet Press Newsletter - Sunday October 1 2006 - (813)

Sunday October 1 2006 edition
Free Internet Press is operated on your donations. Donate Today
Baghdad Shut Down After Fears Of Attack On Green Zone 2006-09-30 19:33:52 The U.S. military said a captured al-Qaeda suspect and members of his cell were "in the final stages" of planning an attack on the Green Zone. An unprecedented curfew prompted by the arrest left millions of Baghdadis stranded at home on Saturday without supplies during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The U.S. military said the suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq member was arrested late Friday at the home of senior Sunni Arab political leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, where he was working as a personal bodyguard. Al-Dulaimi is a member of the Iraqi Accordance Front - the largest Sunni coalition in the 275-member parliament, where it holds 44 seats - and the military was quick to distance the politician from the raid, stressing that he was "not the target". "This operation in no way implies Dr. al-Dulaimi was associated with any illegal activity," the military said, adding that the suspect was captured in a security trailer at al-Dulaimi's home. Read The Full Story Super Virus Claims At Least 49 Lives In Top British Hospitals 2006-09-30 19:32:46 The true scale of Britain's hospital superbug problems emerged today as a leading hospital trust admitted that a "hypervirulent" infection had claimed the lives of at least 49 patients - and possibly as many as 78 people - in the space of nine months. The superbug Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), which can cause severe illness and death in patients who have undergone surgery, appears to be at unprecedented levels. It has turned into a more virulent strain, ironically as a result of antibiotics commonly prescribed to fight other infections. The increase in cases is partly due to dirty wards, but also to a shortage of beds. The bacterium has also become more deadly because it has mutated genetically, becoming resistant to other treatments. Three hospitals in Leicester admitted Saturday that the bug is likely to have caused 28 patients' deaths and contributed to another 21 since the beginning of this year. A further 29 suspicious cases have been referred to the coroner. One of the affected hospitals lies in the constituency of the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who has tried to prioritize infection control within Britain's National Health Service  (NHS). It emerged last week that at least 20 patients are thought to have died during an outbreak in Kent earlier this year as a resilient strain of C. difficile spread across the country. The Healthcare Commission, the NHS's independent inspection body, is to hold an inquiry into the outbreak at Maidstone Hospital, when 136 patients were diagnosed with the infection over a three-month period. Read The Full Story GOP Leaders Knew Of Foley Email To Page 2006-09-30 19:24:03 Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children's issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday. The exchanges began with what Republicans now describe as an "overfriendly" e-mail message from Foley to the unidentified teenager, but news reports about the exchanges have led to the disclosure of e-mail correspondence with other former pages in which the discussions became more and more sexually explicit. Shortly after he was confronted by ABC News on Friday about the subject, Foley, who represented a south Florida district, resigned from the House. The revelations set off a political upheaval, with Democrats and some Republicans alike calling for a full investigation of Foley's conduct and whether House leaders did enough to look into it. Members of the Republican leadership sought Saturday to detail how they had handled the case in an effort to defuse the matter, even as it was emerging as an issue in Congressional races. Among those who became aware of the communication in the fall of 2005 between Foley and the 16-year-old page, who worked for Representative Rodney Alexander, Republican of Louisiana, were Representative John A. Boehner, the majority leader, and Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Reynolds said in a statement Saturday that he had also personally raised the issue with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert earlier this year. Read The Full Story Principal Shot At Wisconsin School Dies, Student Charged With Homocide 2006-09-30 13:01:31 A school principal shot Friday morning by a student died a few hours later while in surgery, the University of Wisconsin-Madison hospital said Friday. The 15-year-old was taken into custody and charged with first-degree intentional homicide, the district attorney said. No one else was hurt. The homecoming weekend shooting happened one day after Weston Schools Principal John Klang gave the student, Eric Hainstock, a disciplinary warning for having tobacco on school grounds, the criminal complaint said. Hainstock had told a friend the principal would not "make it through homecoming," the complaint said. Read The Full Story Isaac Strengthens To Hurricane, Could Reach Canada In Days 2006-09-30 13:00:38 Isaac strengthened into the fifth hurricane of the Atlantic season Saturday, and could reach eastern Canada by early next week, said forecasters. At 11 a.m. ET, Isaac had top sustained winds near 75 mph, just above the 74 mph threshold to become a hurricane, said the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Isaac should stay to the east of Bermuda, but the Canadian Maritimes and Newfoundland could feel the outer edges of the storm by Monday or Tuesday, said forecasters. Read The Full Story Opinion: Legislating Violations Of The U.S. Constitution 2006-09-30 00:06:55 Intellpuke: The following opinion column was written by Erwin Chemerinsky for the washingtonpost.com website. It addresses constitutional issues involving U.S. House Resolution  2679, primarily those issues dealing with actions by the government that are unconstitutional, including the separation of church and state. Mr. Chemerinsky is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke University. The House has approved the bill. Prof. Chemerinsky's column begins here: With little public attention or even notice, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill that undermines enforcement of the First Amendment's separation of church and state. The Public Expression of Religion Act - H.R. 2679 - provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. A federal statute, 42 United States Code section 1988, provides that attorneys are entitled to recover compensation for their fees if they successfully represent a plaintiff asserting a violation of his or her constitutional or civil rights. For example, a lawyer who successfully sues on behalf of a victim of racial discrimination or police abuse is entitled to recover attorney's fees from the defendant who acted wrongfully. Any plaintiff who successfully sues to remedy a violation of the Constitution or a federal civil rights statute is entitled to have his or her attorney's fees paid. Congress adopted this statute for a simple reason: to encourage attorneys to bring cases on behalf of those whose rights have been violated. Congress was concerned that such individuals often cannot afford an attorney and vindicating constitutional rights rarely generates enough in damages to pay a lawyer on a contingency fee basis. Read The Full Story As India Uses Up Groundwater, Farming And Food Crisis Looms 2006-09-30 00:06:01 Bhanwar Lal Yadav, once a cultivator of cucumber and wheat in Teja Ka Bas, India, has all but given up growing food. No more suffering through drought and the scourge of antelope that would destroy what little would survive on his fields. Today he has reinvented himself as a vendor of what counts here as the most precious of commodities: the water under his land. Each year he bores ever deeper. His well now reaches 130 feet down. Four times a day he starts up his electric pumps. The water that gurgles up, he sells to the local government - 13,000 gallons a day. What is left, he sells to thirsty neighbors. He reaps handsomely, and he plans to continue for as long as it lasts. "However long it runs, it runs," he said. "We know we will all be ultimately doomed." Read The Full Story Brazilian Jet With 150 Aboard Missing After Collision 2006-09-30 00:04:23 A Brazilian jetliner with more than 150 people aboard was reported missing Friday over the Amazon jungle after colliding with a smaller executive jet, according to aviation authorities. Wladamir Caze, spokesman for the Brazilian aviation authority, told the Associated Press that Gol airlines flight 1907 left the jungle city of Manaus and disappeared after a collision. The Brazilian Aviation agency said the accident occurred in midair about 470 miles south of Manaus in the remote southwestern region of Para state. News reports said the plane reportedly struck a Brazilian-made Legacy aircraft. The Legacy managed to land at the Caximbo base in southern Para, some 1,250 miles northwest of Rio, despite suffering damage. Read The Full Story U.K. Blocks U.S. Rice Because Of GM Contamination 2006-09-30 00:02:32 American rice which may have been contaminated with a controversial GM (genetically modified) strain has been effectively blocked from the U.K., it emerged Friday. The world's biggest importer of rice has said it has ceased trading in U.S.-grown rice because of fears about the GM variety, which has not been approved for human use. Ebro Puleva, the Spanish rice processing company which controls 30% of the European Union (E.U.) rice market, said it has stopped all U.S. rice imports because of the threat of contamination by a strain of GM rice grown in crop trials by the GM company Bayer between 1998 and 2001. The strain, known as LLRICE 601, was never approved for human consumption but has escaped in large quantities into the world food chain. Read The Full Story	U.S. Pushed Britain MI5 In Airport Terror Swoop 2006-09-30 19:33:27 The U.S. warned Britain that it was prepared to seize the key suspect in the U.K.'s biggest ever anti-terrorism operation and fly him to a secret detention center for interrogation by American agents, even if this meant riding roughshod over its closest ally, The Observer reports. American intelligence agents told their British counterparts they were ready to "render" Rashid Rauf, a British citizen allegedly linked to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and who was under surveillance in Pakistan, unless he was picked up immediately. Rauf is the key suspect in the alleged plot to detonate explosives on up to 10 transatlantic planes that was exposed in August and, according to the police, would have brought "mass murder on an unimaginable scale". The Americans' demand for Rauf's quick arrest dismayed the British intelligence services, which were worried that it could prompt terrorist cells in the U.K. working on separate plots to bring forward their plans or go underground. In the weeks preceding his arrest it is understood that MI5 and MI6 discussed with their U.S. counterparts the best way to dismantle the alleged plot. Britain wanted more time to monitor Rauf, but the U.S. was adamant that Rauf should be arrested immediately. The revelation casts new light on the nature of America's relationship with Britain in the war on terrorism and provides further evidence of its suspicions that Pakistan was not fully committed in the war against al-Qaeda. Read The Full Story Overpass Near Montreal Collapses 2006-09-30 19:24:39 An overpass near Montreal collapsed Saturday, crushing two cars whose occupants were feared dead, authorities said. At least five people were injured. Drivers on Highway 19 slammed on their brakes and watched in horror as the overpass slowly collapsed, sending cars plunging and crushing at least two vehicles. Quebec provincial police did not confirm any deaths but spokeswoman Chantal Mackels said police believed it was unlikely that anyone in the two crushed cars survived. "We watched the overpass slowly come down and two cars fell from it," witness Golda Simon told TVA network. Ambulances quickly arrived on the scene and transported five people. Three were in critical condition including two suffering from head injuries. Emergency workers had not yet reached people trapped under the wreckage, said Andre Champagne of ambulance service Urgence-Sante. Emergency workers were trying to secure the site before attending to those trapped, he told the Associated Press. Read The Full Story Behind Public Optimism On Iraq, Administration Had Doubts 2006-09-30 13:02:53 Intellpuke: The following is compiled of extracts from Bob Woodward's new book "State of Denial". This extract also appears today on the Washington Post's website. The extract begins here: In May, President Bush spoke in Chicago and gave a characteristically upbeat forecast: "Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat." Two days later, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House that contradicted the president's forecast. Instead of a "long retreat," the report predicted a more violent 2007: "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year." A graph included in the assessment measured attacks from May 2003 to May 2006. It showed some significant dips, but the current number of attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and Iraqi authorities was as high as it had ever been - exceeding 3,500 a month. (In July the number would be over 4,500.) The assessment also included a pessimistic report on crude oil production, the delivery of electricity and political progress. Read The Full Story Brazilian Plane Crash Site Found, Survivors Unlikely 2006-09-30 13:01:04 Brazilian air force pilots spotted the wreckage of a jetliner that crashed deep in the Amazon jungle, and an aviation official said Saturday it was unlikely any of the 155 people aboard had survived. The president of Brazil's airport authority, Jose Carlos Pereira, said Gol airlines Flight 1907 was traveling at nearly 310 mph when it slammed into the ground on Friday. "Our experience shows that when one cannot find the fuselage relatively intact and when the wreckage is concentrated in a relatively small area, the chances of finding any survivors are practically nonexistent," he said. He said officials were investigating whether the newly purchased Boeing 737 collided with an executive jet before crashing. Read The Full Story Rep. Foley Resigns Over Sexually Explicit Emails To Teenage Page 2006-09-30 00:07:19 Six-term U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida) resigned Friday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to at least one underage male former page. Foley, who was considered likely to win reelection this fall, said in a three-sentence letter of resignation: "I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent." The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley's GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told the Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of some "contact" between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), and that Hastert assured him "we're taking care of it". Read The Full Story FDA Says Bayer Failed To Reveal Heart Drug Risk Study 2006-09-30 00:06:31 Bayer A.G., the German pharmaceutical giant, failed to reveal to federal drug officials the results of a large study suggesting that a widely used heart-surgery medicine might increase the risks of death and stroke, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Friday. Bayer scientists even appeared at a public meeting called by the F.D.A. on Sept. 21 to discuss the possibility that the drug, Trasylol, might have serious risks, but they did not mention the study or its worrisome results. In a highly unusual move, the food and drug agency released a public health advisory saying it had learned of the study's existence only on Wednesday. Preliminary results of the study demonstrate "that use of Trasylol may increase the chance for death, serious kidney damage, congestive heart failure and strokes," said the advisory. Read The Full Story Senate Vote Gives U.S.-Mexico Border Fence Final Go-Ahead 2006-09-30 00:05:13 The Senate gave final approval last night to legislation authorizing the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border, shelving President Bush's vision of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in favor of a vast barrier. The measure was pushed hard by House Republican leaders, who badly wanted to pass a piece of legislation that would make good on their promises to get tough on illegal immigrants, despite warnings from critics that a multibillion-dollar fence would do little to address the underlying economic, social and law enforcement problems, or to prevent others from slipping across the border. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) surprised many advocates of a more comprehensive approach to immigration problems when he took up the House bill last week. In Congress's rush to recess last night for the fall political campaigns, the fence bill passed easily, 80 to 19, with 26 Democrats joining 54 Republicans in support. One Republican, Sen. Lincoln D. Chaffee (Rhode Island); one independent, Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vermont); and 17 Democrats opposed the bill. The president has indicated that he will sign it. Read The Full Story Hedge Fund With Big Loss Says It Will Close 2006-09-30 00:03:10 Amaranth Advisors, the $9.2 billion hedge fund that lost $6.5 billion in less than a month, is preparing to shut down. Nicholas Maounis, the founder of the hedge fund, sent a letter to investors last night informing them that the fund was suspending all redemptions for Sept. 30 and Oct. 31, to "enable the Amaranth funds to generate liquidity for investors in an orderly fashion, with the goal of maximizing the proceeds of asset dispositions." Investors have met with Amaranth throughout the week, many demanding the return of their money. "As you know, the multistrategy funds have recently received substantial redemption requests," Maounis said in the letter. Read The Full Story
Original materials on this site © Free Internet Press. Any mirrored or quoted materials © their respective authors, publications, or outlets, as shown on their publication, indicated by the link in the news story. Original Free Internet Press materials may be copied and/or republished without modification, provided a link to http://FreeInternetPress.com is given in the story, or proper credit is given. Newsletter options may be changed in your preferences on http://freeinternetpress.com Please email editor@freeinternetpress.com there are any questions. XML/RSS/RDF Newsfeed Syndication: http://freeinternetpress.com/rss.php